Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

The recent series of articles I wrote on blogging as a business model sparked a few queries about how I have gone about outsourcing the writing of my blogs. In the article I talked about how it is important to move away from being solely responsible for content output, otherwise you limit your potential for growth and are effectively self employed.

SmallBusinessBranding.com Case Study

Over a year ago I purchased the blog SmallBusinessBranding.com (SBB) from Michael Pollock. When I first took over ownership of the blog I began writing the content myself, doubling my writing commitments since I was also writing to this blog, Entrepreneurs-Journey (EJ), at the same time.

I had a lot of difficulty writing to two blogs. Each time I wrote an article for SBB, I realized it was appropriate for EJ as well. I went from writing one blog 100% of the time to dividing my output across two blogs, and I knew from experience running two businesses at once would end in weakening both sites (see my business timeline for the story of the English School I was running [badly] as a second business). I decided to come up with a solution to keep SBB running without me as the author, since I wanted to devote all my writing output to EJ.

After asking for suggestions in my forums and brainstorming, I decided to bring on one or two bloggers to write for SBB. My initial plan was to advertise for the bloggers and test them for a month. If they proved dedicated I would offer them revenue share of income generated by SBB - I was thinking something along the lines of 50%. I was going to do some number crunching first to work out how many posts were done vs how much they would get paid, but this situation never eventuated.

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Over at the Small Business Branding blog one of the resident writers, Robert Kingston, has flown from Brisbane Australia to Orlando Florida to do coverage of the Mplanet 2006 event.

Robert was given the opportunity thanks to a relationship he fostered with one of the organizers of the event which came about after blogging about a competition they were running for VISA. Thanks to his blogging Robert was invited to attend the event for free with a press pass to do coverage on Small Business Branding. This creates a win-win situation as the Mplanet organizers get some great coverage over the blogosphere (other bloggers were offered similar invitations) and the bloggers get to attend the event for free.

Robert’s coverage began with his first post - SBB Invited To Cover Mplanet 2006! and just today he has put up the first lot of photos - Mplanet 2006 Kicks Off!. More posts will be going up over the next few days as Robert attends the event and blogs on a daily basis.

I for one can’t wait to see more photos

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Michael Pollock from Solostream Webstudio has finished the redesign of Small Business Branding. The new design better reflects the multiple writers and you can now meet all the faces behind the articles that have been posted to the site over the past few weeks.

Check it out at SmallBusinessBranding.com

I’ll be calling for more authors in the near future so if you would like a chance to write for Small Business Branding stay tuned!

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June was a unique month for me in terms of blogging and business. A roller-coaster ride would be an apt description. Traffic growth at all my sites has been fantastic and in the last few weeks I have enjoyed a few consecutive days of 3000+ uniques here at Entrepreneur’s Journey. While that’s less than many other blogs out there I know it’s a lot more than the greater majority, so I’m doing something right.

As I reported my business has managed to turnover a profit and despite the occasional murmurings in my head that I want to leave it, I’m still here, still steering the ship and heading into the 6th year of operations, and my third full time tax year. Overall I’m excited about where the business is going, so I suspect I’ll be here next tax year saying the same things, at least I hope I will be!

Controversy

As you know doubt are aware of and probably enjoyed watching (you love your day time blogosphere soapies don’t you!), thanks to some mis-communication on my part, what should have been a minor thing blew up into a blogosphere incident of tremendous proportions (at least in my mind it was), which continued long after what I did set it off. I’ve said my sorrys to those people I felt I owed apologies to and have moved forward after a sleepless night or two.

I’d like to reiterate that I am not involved with any spam sites and I do not recommend spamming practices. If you search the web you will find my name attached to very few domains, most of which I have talked about on this blog. If you ever see my content on scraper sites or automatic generated blogs it’s because my content is being ripped off FROM my blogs, not that I have set these sites up (I would be pretty stupid to rip off my own content) and I’m actually working to have some of the sites shut down since they are basically stealing from me. Some of my articles are circulated as part of being published on EzineArticles.com, which is how article marketing works and is with my permission. I actually have a very small presence online in general and I’m quite open with everything I do - this blog is testament to that.

I do recommend products that could be used for spam - anything about improving search engine rankings, tips for better pay per click advertising campaigns, improving Google AdSense (or any advertising media) results, building websites, online marketing or pretty much anything to do with making money online can be abused by spammers. That’s the nature of business - there are always bad fish and they have access to the same tools that everyone else does, so when I help the good people I am inadvertently helping the bad people too. In my opinion it’s the job of the organizations who provide the income streams, such as Google, to make it difficult or impossible for people to abuse their systems.

Which brings me to another point - there is something wrong with AdSense. I’m not saying the system is bad, it works fine, what seems to be the problem is the effect it has on people. Once they taste the income greed sets in, some think only of the money and will go to any lengths to increase their earnings. It’s only a minority of course, certainly most AdSense publishers are good people, but the fact that there is so much negative energy and so many very charged opinions on the topic of AdSense spam shows that there is something wrong, something that Google needs to address, because the negativity will come back to bite them.

As a Google AdWords advertiser I’m experiencing pretty poor results on the content network (the AdSense network) and I think I’m not the only one, as a few of my colleagues have reported the same for all kinds of different campaigns. AdWords for search is fantastic, it always has been which probably has a lot do with the fact when people use a search engine they need answers, hence AdWords ads are valuable and relevant. AdWords campaigns on websites - the content network made up of AdSense publishers - doesn’t come close to providing valuable results, which yet again may be a sign that something needs to change regarding how AdSense works. I don’t know, these are just some thoughts based on my recent experiences, I’m sure Google has the data and are working to make things better.

Meanderings

Besides the lessons learnt on communication, I’ve also had a think about some other things. When controversy involving you happens you need to stop and take heed of why it happened, what it means and how you need to adjust what you are doing. Here are some of things I have been thinking about -

Affiliate Promotions

It’s clear people are hyper sensitive to affiliate marketing especially when you are a blogger with a profile based on integrity and credibility. Whether I intended to or not, I have managed to build my blogging personality into one of these personalities. My blog and my personal brand carry some weight and consequently what I write on my blogs are under scrutiny to a higher degree. When I make mistakes the backlash can be significant depending on what I did and who disagrees with it, regardless of my intentions. This fact alone has already started to impact the way I write blog posts when it comes to talking about other people’s products and actions. I suspect the paranoia will reduce, but I’ve definitely changed.

I’ve heard the grumblings that people don’t like the trend of affiliate promotions here at E-J. I’ve felt the transition myself and I’ve realized it’s not healthy for my blog or me. When I originally began blogging I started by producing content without thinking about specific ways I could make money from it. I wanted to teach people everything I knew and give as much as I could for free. If I was to make money It would happen as a result of providing value and as a side effect, the focus was 100% on free value. In the recent months perhaps the scale has changed slightly and my focus shifted towards making money to the degree that it impacted the quality of my blogging. I was still well aware that value is vital for success, but perhaps the percentage dropped a little.

Of course I’m not going to stop promoting via affiliate marketing. I like doing reviews and I know people appreciate my recommendations and feedback when I use a product or service because it helps them to determine whether the product or service is right for them. I rely on other people’s reviews and opinion when I make my initial choices and I don’t mind if the person who provides this opinion gets an affiliate commission. I consider it thanks for the work they put in and I’m sure many of you consider it as thanking me when you buy something via my affiliate links. This style of relationship is fine, as long as profiting isn’t the main focus - that’s when the quality drops and the errors occur.

What I am going to do is tighten up somewhat what I choose to promote. I will only promote products I have produced myself, I have made use of, read or sampled or know and trust the source well. Putting it simply I’ll endeavour to be as transparent and relevant as possible whenever I review a product, even more so than I have been in the past.

Value Proposition

My intentions are to move the focus back to giving as much value as I can, which as the universe intends, usually results in greater rewards anyway - financial and otherwise. I’ve already noticed an increase in rewards just from the slight realignment of my intentions that I have made mentally in the last few days. I think this really validates that giving as much as you can for free is the best formula for receiving value in return.

Terms of Service

One thing I will definitely be doing in the coming weeks is to put together a terms of service. It’s something I’ve meant to do for a while since I really need a set of rules for how I govern my blogs to be clear and public, so when I do take action I have justification for it and don’t appear quite so random.

Topic Re-focus

Another thing I noticed is that I’m breaking my own rules somewhat regarding staying on topic. Entrepreneur’s Journey has been an evolving blog and while it has a general theme at the moment I think the topic range needs tighten up, as does Small Business Branding’s purpose.

I’ve let my motivation take me where it’s wanted to go regarding the content of my blogs, most of which has been well received by you, which is great, but I know I’ve probably turned a few people off when suddenly a personal development topic follows on from one about getting traffic to blogs, which came before one on how to use pay per click advertising. While all my topics fit well enough under the banner of an “entrepreneur’s journey“, I feel I’m at a place now where I know where my interests lie and where I can provide value. Some changes are necessary to better reflect this and clarify what my blogging is about.

I’m currently planning to start a blog specifically on personal development for twenty somethings (people in the 20ish age bracket - young adults like myself). It will be the repository for all my future writings like the opinion and self development articles you have seen here at Entrepreneur’s Journey. I will no longer publish any personal development pieces on E-J. I don’t know whether this new blog will take off or whether I have enough motivation and content in me to keep it going but I do know it needs to have it’s own place on the web. Even if I publish only one article a month it will be nice to have a place to write about subjects related to personal development with a clear focus, and I definitely enjoy the topic.

There will be a similar story regarding topics related to blogging. The Blog Traffic School Pre-Launch Blog, after the launch of the course, will become a regular blog on blog traffic and Entrepreneur’s Journey will no longer have topics related to blogging unless it’s specifically related to Internet business and not appropriate for the Blog Traffic School blog (for example using blogs as a marketing tool for an Internet business). I think it’s important to separate the topic of blogging into it’s own blog and it makes sense for me to align that with my course on blog traffic.

The focus of Entrepreneur’s Journey will return to what it was originally - 100% Internet business and entrepreneurship, and no doubt the topics will largely reflect what I am personally learning and doing regarding my online enterprises. I plan to produce more reviews since I’ve been reading and testing products lately as part of building Blog Traffic School and I’d like to pass on what I have learnt to you. The podcasts will also continue as they have been and I will probably start to release some Camtasia presentations as well since I have recently bought the software.

I’m still not sure exactly where I am going with Small Business Branding. It’s been a great addition to my blogging family and has paid dividends beyond the purchase price but I’m still not exactly sure what I’m trying to achieve with it. Time will tell where this blog takes me.

None of these changes are set in stone of course, but that’s my current thinking.

Too Many Blogs!

Looking at my ever expanding portfolio of blogs one thing is clear - I can’t sustain the level of writing I have done at Entrepreneur’s Journey for the past year on every blog I run, I am not Darren Rowse. Entrepreneur’s Journey, Small Business Branding, a new personal development blog, Blog Traffic School Blog and another blog related to blog traffic (this one is still a secret), makes for a huge writing workload. I’m aiming to reduce my writing workload, not increase it, so I need to carefully plan what I want to get out of blogging and where I can best give back. I really need to 80/20 my blogging.

To be honest I’m not entirely sure what to do since I don’t know where my motivation is going to take me. I have a lot of vested interest in Entrepreneur’s Journey given I have worked hard to build it into what it is and I enjoy writing here, so I don’t see this changing for a while yet. However every blogger has to realize that they can’t blog forever, at some point they will have to stop writing and even the most prolific of us, those like Darren Rowse and Dane Carlson, won’t be able to keep up the frenetic pace forever. Something has to change eventually.

Ideally I want my income to not be dependent on active blogging so I can be free to write about what I want to, when I want to. I’d like to write a book one day, something like the Alchemist - personal development in the guise of fiction, and I think a blog is a great way to start creating the chapters and build up a ground roots following. Right now I don’t rely on the income from blogging to live off, but it really helps, and with the launch of Blog Traffic School I certainly want to stay heavily involved with it. Blogging is definitely part of my future, especially as long as I intend for writing to be a part of it.

Blogging Is Not Passive Income

Blogging is not a passive form of income so any blogger thinking about using blogs as their main source of income need to plan for those times when you can’t blog or no longer want to. If your income is based on posting 10 new articles a week on your blog so you make money from the good old formula of traffic+advertising, you do not have a financially sustainable operation because of the dependency on your labor. I want a financially sustainable business which generates passive income and grants me the freedom to blog when and how I want to.

Can blogging provide this? Perhaps. I think it can certainly be part of the picture but I’m not sure exactly how yet given that blogs are such “active” creatures and if update frequency slows down or even stops altogether they tend to die off eventually.

I’m not sure what the future holds for me and blogging mostly because despite knowing what I enjoy I am still not sure exactly how to make it all work together to create a financially secure lifestyle with abundant freedoms. I’m pretty close now, I’m not struggling for money and I have a lot of freedoms, but it’s not there yet, there is more work to be done.

I suspect there will always be more work to be done…

The Immediate Future

Now it’s time to stop speculating on the future and think of today and tomorrow. I’ve had a bunch of generous people submit articles in response to my call for contributions to cover me while I take a holiday from content production on my blogs during this month. The articles will be released over the coming weeks, some on Entrepreneur’s Journey and some on Small Business Branding, and cover quite a range of topics which I suspect you will enjoy - there is something for everyone. You will get to meet some great bloggers too so be sure to check out their blogs if you like their article.

I’ll be spending most of my time in July finishing the Blog Traffic School course and then getting it into the online system I have just finished setting up. All the details about the course will be released on the Pre-Launch Blog, so stay tuned to that blog if you want more information on building your blog’s traffic.

I’ll see you online,

Yaro Starak
Evolving Entrepreneur

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This post catches up both May and April’s content across the Yaro blog network, but first, a big thank you to those who provided sponsorship during the last month (if you are interested in increasing traffic to your website check out the advertising options).

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Content Recap

Things have been pretty busy over at Small Business Marketing and Branding where I finally had a chance to knuckle down and produce some nice “Yaro style” articles for my newest blog, including:

• How To Throw Away $500
  If you appreciate learning from other people’s mistakes then this article offers a good lesson on how not to spend your marketing dollars. I recount my story from the early days of BetterEdit.com when I wasted $500 on a not so good sponsorship promotion.
• How to Market Your Local Business on the Internet
  Will Swayne popped by offering this very practical article on using the web to market a local business. This was a very well received article judging by the comments left.
• Are You Taking Advantage Of All Your Opportunities?
  On a whim I recently tested a new method to make money from my blogs using the services of Text Link Ads to sell text links. It’s been quite successful and prompted me to ask whether you are taking advantage of all your opportunities. This article includes four dot-point suggestions which should get you hunting for opportunities in your business.
• How Would You Spend A $1000 Marketing Budget?
  I asked my readers this question and we got some good answers from both online and offline business owners.
• Can’t Think Of An Original Business Idea?
  If you are stuck to find a business idea you think will work perhaps this article will stir some creative juices in you.
• Listening To Word Of Mouth Marketing On The Street
  A few weeks ago I was out and about down in Melbourne where I did some word-of-mouth research. Anita Campbell was so impressed with the topic of this article that she featured it at the start of one of her Small Business Trends radio shows.
• What Is Your Position In The Marketplace?
  This article is all about positioning. I used my recent work positioning myself as the “Blog Traffic King” as an example and asked you how you position yourself and your business.
• How To Deal With People and Leverage Your Networks
  I recounted my first meeting with a CEO and offered some tips on leveraging your networks to help grow your business.

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